Leslie Macklin RiceOzark, Missouri

To live without something, that is, to exist separate, evokes feelings of isolation, loss, desire, and longing. These are powerful emotions that elicit a wide range of reactions. Most interesting to me are the reactions that show someone’s intensity of effort to alter their separation. I am inspired by these efforts and through my work, reflect on how separation can strengthen, maintain or remove feelings of disconnect.

In this work, I create passages and barriers such as windows, doors, stairways, walls, and fences. These architectural specifics are designed to separate or support passage and are potent metaphorically in speaking about the way in which personal connections can be made or thwarted. Like a form of visual historical fiction, it is thought these real architectural characters in imagined histories that I respond to the complexity of human connection toward others, objects, and experiences.